The Journal · The Brantford Club
The Works at War: Brantford’s Founding Families, 1914 to 1918
When the First World War came, Brantford answered in its own currency. A Home Guard formed on November 21, 1914; the Waterous Engine Works gave $500 for the 215th; and Lloyd Harris, a man the Club’s records place at its first table in 1898, gave a motor ambulance to the Red Cross. F. D. Reville’s 1920 county history keeps the ledger.
A manufacturing city goes to war the way it does everything: through its works and its families. Reville’s war pages read like a subscription list, gift by gift with sums attached, and several of the names on it were already old friends of this Journal. This entry keeps to what Reville lists, exactly as he lists it.
What did Brantford give in the First World War?
Brantford gave organization first and money immediately after. A Home Guard was formed on November 21, 1914, its officers named in full in Reville’s account, with Sergeant L. M. Waterous among them, and the giving followed in kind: the Waterous Engine Works put $500 behind the 215th, the Brant Chapter of the I.O.D.E. gave a field kitchen to the 36th, John Penman gave two more, the Penman company of Paris supplied a Ford car, and the Motor Ambulance League of Paris raised $1,800 for a motor ambulance in 1915. Reville records each gift in a line, which is how a county that kept good books said thank you.
“The Waterous Engine Works gave $500 for the 215th.”
F. D. Reville, History of the County of Brant, 1920: the war gifts, listed
The names from the first table
Two of the names in Reville’s war ledger belong to the Club’s own founding record. Waterous stands first on the Charter roll of 1898, Charles Waterous, Manufacturer, and it was the family works that wrote the $500 line sixteen years later, with a Waterous sergeant in the Home Guard and Mrs. Julius Waterous serving with the Women’s Hospital Aid on the city’s war committee. And Lloyd Harris, listed in the centennial history among the company at the Club’s opening night on December 31, 1898, is the “Mr. Lloyd Harris” of Reville’s gift list, giving a motor ambulance to the Red Cross. The men who founded a social club in peacetime turned out to be exactly who a city needs in the other kind of time.
- November 21, 1914
- The Home Guard formed in Brantford, officers named in full, Sergeant L. M. Waterous among them
- $500
- The Waterous Engine Works, for the 215th
- A motor ambulance
- Mr. Lloyd Harris, to the Red Cross
- Field kitchens
- The Brant Chapter, I.O.D.E., one to the 36th; John Penman, two more; Paris, one
- $1,800
- The Motor Ambulance League of Paris, for a motor ambulance, 1915
What the Club’s own book says about those years
Very little, and honestly so. The Club’s centennial history has its own preoccupation in that decade: Prohibition arrived in September 1916 and the Minutes go quiet five days later, so the Club’s war years sit inside the same gap as everything else from that hard stretch. The record of what the Club’s families did lives instead in Reville’s county pages, which is why the Journal reads them. Between the two books, the story assembles: the house endured its own siege at home while its founding names equipped the one overseas.
In peacetime the family names built the city; after 1914 they wrote the subscription list.
Questions the record answers
What was the 215th Battalion?
The battalion tied to Brant County in Reville’s pages, where the Waterous Engine Works’ $500 gift is recorded and Home Guard officers appear among its ranks and staff. Reville treats it as the county’s own, and this Journal follows his usage.
Did The Brantford Club’s founders take part in the war effort?
The founding families did, per Reville: the Waterous works gave $500 for the 215th, a Waterous sergeant served in the Home Guard of 1914, Mrs. Julius Waterous sat on the city’s war committee, and Lloyd Harris, present at the Club’s 1898 opening night, gave a motor ambulance to the Red Cross.
Why are the Club’s own war records thin?
Because the Club’s early Minute Books passed out of its keeping and the Minutes effectively stop in September 1916, when Prohibition struck. The county’s record, kept by F. D. Reville in 1920, fills in what the Club’s book cannot.
Sources: F. D. Reville, History of the County of Brant (1920), volume two, for the Home Guard, the gift list, and the war committees; the Club’s centennial history for the opening-night company and the wartime gap in the Minutes.
The works themselves, and their peacetime order books, are in Third in Canada.
